Hero of the Day
by Numisma
Summary: [Inuyasha x Kagome] Inuyasha is no storyteller, no teacher, and no hero, but he can still perform these tasks, especially when it comes to the most important person in his life... and her little brother. Oneshot, gift!fic for prpl pen


Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha

A/N: this was written as gift!fic for prpl pen, who requested Inuyasha and Souta platonic interaction in a oneshot. Here ya go, enjoy.

-

"So, what's it like over there?" Souta asks for the third time, and for a moment Inuyasha is inclined to reiterate all the dangers that would await a young boy like him, but refrains at the last second.

"Less people, more youkai, and a lot more woods and grass and mostly villages," he answers.

"Oh, I already knew that." Souta grins; Inuyasha grunts almost imperceptibly, folding his arms and leaning more heavily against the edge of the boy's bed. "But that's about all I know. Sis doesn't talk about the Sengoku Jidai much." The boy frowns. "Or ever, really."

"What would you want to know about that place, anyway?"

Souta gives him a blank look before stating, "Just what you two always do over there." Even at twelve, Souta is unsure how to express his desire to stay close with his sister, because ever since three years ago she was almost always gone, up until recently, and despite knowing her all his life he sometimes feels these days like he's just getting to know her all over again, like a freshly made friend. But at twelve, he's smart enough to notice this sort of thing for what it is. And he can't let go of the one person he knows who knows this new Kagome the most. The most and the best.

Inuyasha shrugs. "Stuff." With Naraku dead there isn't much to do, and when he is _back there _and _back then_, he's rarely preoccupied unless Kagome is around. He's no storyteller. But Souta pouts and punches him weakly in the shoulder, so he supposes there's room for elaboration.

-

Many times he visited the well house and the special _super duper exclusive _time machine it housed, but each time he never learned more about why it worked at all, or why according to Sis it went _then_ but no_when_ else, and nowhere could he find its special controls and time machine settings. All he found were splinters. But it's only natural for a boy of nine or ten to look for such things, for the trick behind the magic, and by the time he's eleven or twelve the only logical answer for the nature of the well's whims is this: that's just the way it is, and the way it will always be.

Not everything works like clockwork, in a clear-cut, methodical, mechanical, pre-set and understandable manner. He realises this, eventually, and accepts it, for the most part. But if he could just figure out why only Sis and Inuyasha can pass through, and why they always go to that same place in time, he'd be happy.

All that his sister and the hanyou can say are their own theories. No one seems to have an instruction manual on hand. But that's how life is.

-

"Here," Inuyasha pronounces loudly while he is helping Souta scour historical and mythological texts, carefully tapping a clawed finger at a paragraph in the middle of the page on Souta's side. After reading through books and old registrars for hours, most of which he's simply let Souta read because he doesn't know half the kanji, he's finally spotted a sign. The text speaks of them, _them_, without naming any names. He knows it could be no one else. Proof what happened just months ago, months and five centuries ago, is real according to now.

Souta reads the passage twice, once to himself, once aloud. But as he speaks he's so excited, so excited to _know_ something, his words run together with glee. It's not that he doesn't already know what the book tells him, because he knows at least a little bit. It's that in a way, his sister has gone down in history.

-

Still hungry for knowledge of _what his sister did _and _when_ and _why_, because it's still slim pickings even with what he's found and what he's been told, Souta decides it's time for more creative tactics.

Every opportunity he gets, he has picked the Sengoku Jidai (or something relating to it and Kagome and Inuyasha and things from the last three years) as his topic for assignments in school. Then, whenever Inuyasha stops by he would jump up from his game, put it on pause, and tug him all the way down the hall, up the stairs, and down that hall to his room. And he's happy that Inuyasha doesn't mind being his study buddy while Kagome's not around. Even if Inuyasha doesn't know most of the material.

Inuyasha's no teacher, but he can still tell Souta about the youkai that the books say aren't really real, about youkai like the flesh-eating mask that Souta once helped defeat. Inuyasha can tell him, other youkai would make that mask seem like a weakling in comparison. He can tell him of living conditions for humans, for youkai, and for those like him, which he unfortunately knows only too well.

Inuyasha can tell him a lot, because he's seen a lot.

-

"Can I touch your ears?"

"Why?" Inuyasha sounds annoyed, and the ears in question flatten against his head, disappearing into his long white, almost silver hair.

"Because my mom got to, and Sis said she did too, but I never got to." Twiddling his thumbs, Souta barely keeps the whine from his voice. "I just, never asked till now cuz I figured-"

"Eh, fine," Inuyasha says in a staged grumble as the hanyou finally gives in and bends forward. The boy smiles. "Just be gentle and stroke _with_ the fur, not against it, all right?"

-

One day Souta asks about their friends in the past, and the next time Inuyasha goes back and returns, he hands the boy a folded letter. Inside is neat script, and Souta smiles. He sits at his desk and takes out pen and paper, starting his own letter to the boy on the other side, addressing it, _Dear Kohaku_. As the weeks and months progress, the letters pile up for both recipients, Inuyasha as their mail carrier, and Souta is always anxiously awaiting news of Kagome's past friends' health as well as answers to his questions.

What happened, and why won't Kagome talk about it?

Souta learns only of the former. He learns of many things, but Kagome seems to be the only one who knows the latter.

-

To say that Kagome was depressed would be inaccurate. Even Souta knows and recognises this. But from the looks of things, his sister seems happy to talk about everything, everything except what's changed her, whatever that is. It's almost as if there is something slightly different about her appearance, but no one knows what it is, and no one, not even Souta, wants to ask what it is.

When Souta thinks of all those imaginary, improbable diseases that, according to Grandpa, Kagome had, he wonders if maybe there is some truth to it all? That maybe she did really catch something that can only be caught in the Sengoku Jidai? For what else could make Kagome smile so much but make her voice sound so cheerful and fake when she avoids certain questions asked, but something to which she could not have been exposed before that day she fell down the well? He doesn't know, and Inuyasha doesn't either, and if he does, then the hanyou isn't telling him.

But a hanyou like Inuyasha is so easy to read.

-

Souta keeps his Sengoku pen pal's letters in a binder, in plastic sleeves, along with any photographs he conned his sister and the hanyou into taking for him, and as he adds the next one, smoothing out the creases before slipping it into place, tapping the last inch of it in, he hears something muffled. Then the door to his bedroom slams open. The loudness and abruptness make him jump and whirl around, but the sight he sees makes him smile.

Inuyasha and Kagome have crumpled to the floor. An extremely surprised Inuyasha is flattened against the bottom half of the door; Kagome is the flattener, flattening him to the door and the floor, her lips pressed to his and her arms around his neck. They look tangled and uncomfortable, and Kagome's struggling to push herself up off of him.

The two nearly meep in unison as they scramble for more proper, upright positions, and Souta can't keep the grin off his face. Kagome's face flushes, and even Inuyasha, desperately trying to retain his dignity, seems a bit uptight about what her little brother has just seen.

"Souta!" Kagome cries, giggling nervously, as Souta's grin only grows. "Don't keep your door ajar like that. I thought it was closed all the way. It's dangerous, you know, if people um, if, if-"

She stumbles on her words for a moment, before he interrupts, swinging around in his desk chair from side to side. "If they lean on a door they think is closed but really isn't?" he says smugly.

Her eyes shift warily. "Um, yeah. That." She glances at the hanyou by her side, who's got his hands stuffed inside his sleeves and his face turned stoic, and elbows him. The two childishly hackle each other, but in a way that even Souta can tell it's only playfulness, the way he knows by now that these two deal with embarrassing situations.

It's times like this that he realises that while his sister is different in ways he can't describe or put his finger on, she's still the same old sister he's had his whole life. Maybe he had three years apart from her except in sporadic doses. Maybe he lived three years of pretending to everyone but family that she was sick with whatever their grandpa could fathom or dream up. Maybe he just spent several months learning about _the Kagome he doesn't know _from the ones that _that Kagome _does know. But when it all comes down to it, Souta can't be anything but honest.

__

That Kagome is just a facet of the only Kagome there is, the only Kagome that exists. There are facets of him that she doesn't know, facets of Inuyasha that she doesn't know, and facets of their mother and grandpa that she doesn't know. Just because there are facets of Kagome that only Inuyasha knows, that Kohaku and the others from the past know, doesn't mean that there is more than one Kagome and that his sister has become a stranger to him.

Kagome is Kagome, and just because she lived two lives for the past three years doesn't mean she's been split into two separate beings.

Souta stops them as they turn to leave the room. They pause, and he winks and gives them a thumbs up. "So when's the wedding?"

Embarrassment returning, his wide-eyed sister shoves a nearly catatonic Inuyasha into the hallway before the hanyou can retort, tossing over her shoulder, "It was just a kiss!"

"Whaddaya mean it was just a kiss!" comes Inuyasha's nearly fuming scoff from the hallway, obstinate as always, but with a hint of defense. "You, you- people don't just kiss other people for no reason! You meant something in doing that, didn't you! A-and in front of him! You're giving him funny ideas!" But Kagome, who is laughing by now at the flustered hanyou's paranoia, is already shutting her little brother's door tightly, and though Souta can't see into the hallway with the door closed, he can tell, with intense amusement, by the noise they make that she's probably half-shoving, half-dragging him toward her room.

Inuyasha's no hero, despite the tales he's told and the tales they found recorded of the villain they defeated in the past, but he has inadvertently saved Souta from feeling estranged from the one girl extremely important to the both of them.

He goes back to his binder, his collection of the past and his research about the Kagome he thought was a stranger, and folds it shut, shelving it for safekeeping. There's real homework to do.

Though, as Souta works on his math assignment, he can't help but wonder when he'll become an uncle. He's got a feeling he'll be fairly young.


End file.
